


the companion that was so companionable as solitude

by purrfectj



Series: resign yourself to the influence of the earth [9]
Category: Stardew Valley (Video Game), Walden - Henry David Thoreau
Genre: F/M, Gen, Grandfather is a fan of Star Wars, Unresolved Sexual Tension, liquid courage, luau
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-01
Updated: 2016-07-01
Packaged: 2018-07-19 11:57:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,001
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7360531
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/purrfectj/pseuds/purrfectj
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A lot of things happen in a short, jumbled sort of order:<br/>1) Grandfather tells a story<br/>2) Harvey gets the nerve<br/>3) Tess has a party<br/>4) Meadowbrooke makes a profit<br/>5) A secret is revealed<br/>6) Pelican Town throws a Luau.</p><p>This is part 9 of a many-part series exploring Stardew Valley, its inhabitants, and its newest addition, a female farmer named Tess. It's written in present tense and is rooted in my love for the farm where I grew up and my lifelong love affair with Henry David Thoreau's Walden: Or, Life in the Woods.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the companion that was so companionable as solitude

**Author's Note:**

> This is wonky, storytelling wise, on purpose. Cheers!

Grandfather captures her last red checker with a click and a satisfied stretch of his legs, his eyes twinkling stars in the weathered handsomeness of his face. She reaches across the red and black squares to touch his paper-thin cheek, his whiskers rasping and scraping at the sensitive, soft pads of her tiny fingers and she is only eight, rounded with baby fat and steeped in love, tawny skin and big eyes and long, long lashes that he tells her tickle as she crawls over the checkerboard to cuddle into the softness of his chambray shirt, his work-roughened hand catching on the skin of her back, fingers almost long enough to curl around her edges. “Punkin’,” rumbles affectionately under her cheek through his wide, deep chest and he smells like dirt and damp and the sharp forest edges of his aftershave and Tess is drowsy and content, slipping toward dreams as he croons, “Once upon a time, in a galaxy far, far away…” 

He paints a picture with words, this first man who loves her outside the charmed circle of _mother_ and _father_ , this man who lives alone in a ramshackle house on a farm near the sea, who builds her a dollhouse with silver grey driftwood and populates it with exquisitely formed miniatures from his carving knife, who twirls her ‘round and ‘round until she’s dizzy and half-sick and laughing, who retreats into silence, his silver beard trailing down his chest, his sky blue eyes far away under the stubborn curl of iron grey hair that refuses every effort he makes to tame it. The story he gives her in his sonorous, patient voice is about a princess with grit and will and grace, no fair maiden to be rescued but brave and fearless and the engineer of her own destiny, swords and magic and the endless darkness of space wrapped in a tidy bow of duty and honor, punctuated by an ending with her prince that is less _happily ever after_ and more _so they worked and lived and became_. 

And oh, how she works, the farm that is sweat and toil and hard, physical, demanding labor, the woman that becomes cussedness and perseverance and sweat, the love and tending that builds muscle and guts and heart, Meadowbrooke that is home and roots and Grandfather’s gift of connection, to the land and to the town and to the people and, finally, maybe, to herself. 

She might not be destined to be a princess with cinnamon buns of steel but dammit if she won’t be the best fucking farmer Stardew Valley has ever seen. 

In a sickening, breathless lurch, her coffers overflow and Tess is profit rather than loss. 

Robyn extends the cabin into a house, a fancier bathroom with a real tub and shower, a bigger bedroom that boasts a fanciful, curved iron bedstead with its decadent mattress the size of a lake and handstitched quilt, builds her a new barn and expands the chicken coop for the cow, sheep, and four more chickens Tess buys, cash money, from Marnie, slapping it down on the counter and then apologizing when Marnie chuckles and pats her hand. “If you don’t name ‘em, it’s not so sad to lose ‘em.” 

Tess makes sure Lucy, Fred, Ethel, and Ricky are happily clucking away with Larry, Moe, and Curly, corn and hay and the foul-smell of chicken poop that is amazing for her tulips, before she checks on Clarabelle the cow and Shaun the sheep, Clarabelle as docile as any heifer has any right to be, Shaun vocalizing her dismay at Tess daring to touch her soft furry coat. She introduces Link to everyone as if it is a garden party, tea and cakes and fresh cream, and he is soon panting happily by his water bowl, animals running amok in the tall grasses she’s let grow just for this purpose under his benevolent dog gaze. 

From Pierre, delivered by Abigail who accepts Tess’s harried invitation to come back by later, everyone else is, there are saplings, tangled roots wrapped in thick burlap, two for each season, cherry and apricot and apple and orange and pomegranate and peach, and Tess nearly dances as she digs deep in the soil, pours in the water, taps out the dirt, and is happy as a pig in shit as the baby leaves rustle in the dry, hot wind. 

She luxuriates in the spray of her new showerhead before her guests arrive, sets out crackers and cheese and fruit to complement the first bottles of the wine she’s made that tastes of flowers, served in the delicate, elegant stemmed glassware that had been her grandmother’s when she married. Sam, Sebastian, Maru, Emily, and finally Abigail, looking startled to see everyone sprawled out, on, in, and around Tess’s bed, trickle in until Tess’s small troop of misfits is complete, Alex and Hailey having declined her invitation, Hailey with a moue of distaste and Alex with a gentle reminder that he wants to be her friend, not her boyfriend, and Tess wonders why it’s difficult for Alex to make the distinction when Sebastian sprawls like a lazy, unapologetic cat on her floor and wrestles with Link. 

“He’s an idiot,” Emily says solemnly, her head on Maru’s shoulder, her legs in Sam’s lap, Abigail at her feet, and Tess pokes Sebastian with her foot as he rolls by, Link a golden lump at his side. He winks and keeps rolling, Link panting happily, pink tongue lolling out of his long golden muzzle. 

“Why didn’t you ask anyone to dance, T?” The question comes from Sam, good-hearted, sweet-natured Sam, and it sends Sebastian into snorting laughter, causes Emily’s cheeks to pinken prettily and Maru’s to pale, Sebastian’s half-sister gulping at her wine while Abigail’s brow creases. It’s a question with an expiration date that has long passed, the Flower Dance having come and gone weeks ago, before… 

Before. 

It’s as much of a concession as Tess can make to the beginning of summer, so bright in promise and so painful in execution. They are weeks beyond before, even, heading into the now of late summer, slipping inexorably into fall. She wonders if Sam asks here, in front of everyone, because she disappeared so early from the Luau just last week, no time for idle chatter, work, work, work. 

If only they knew. 

“He wouldn’t have said yes,” is the truest answer she can give and Sam tilts his head at her much as Link does when he doesn’t understand what she’s asking him to do, his lips pursing and his eyes guileless and shining. 

“That’s not true,” he rejoins and Sebastian abruptly sobers and sits up, anchoring himself to Tess’s knees with a protective arm that she pats absently, her lips curving slightly as she takes a sip from her glass, the liquid gold and shimmering in the light. Maru, however, nods, slowly, and Emily’s eyes swing wildly from Sebastian to Tess to Sam to Maru and back again, some sort of crazed tennis bystander at a train wreck as Abigail turns to peer out the window. 

“He would have…he wanted…” Maru has to clear her throat, the words croaking but coming out finally. Sebastian’s hand tightens on Tess’s ankle. “He wants you.” 

“He wouldn’t have said yes,” she repeats and knows she is being more mysterious than warranted when her smile spreads, her cheeks aching in counterpoint to her calm statement of rejection but oh, oh, how sweet it is, how wondrous and new and special to have this secret, this _feeling_ that belongs only to them. 

Leaning forward, Tess presses a kiss to the top of Sebastian’s head just as the door opens. Harvey is framed there in the soft white glow of her porchlight, lop-sided smile under perfectly groomed mustache, baggy goldenrod sweater with buttons marching down the front that he wears because she told him she thought Mr. Rogers was sexy, pair of khakis she doesn’t recognize, still sharp at the seams and a dark, loamy brown, his new bright red trainers, a gift from Tess, peeking out from the hem, and she can feel everyone in the room holding their breath as he lets the screen door bang shut behind him. 

“Hope I’m not too late,” he says, setting down the beer and pickled green beans that first lured him in a day or so after the Luau, the Luau where he cornered her behind Elliott’s house after the Governor declared their soup pleasant with a frown that Mayor Lewis rushed to placate. Harvey, too, is frowning, but his eyes are watchful, a weight and expectation in his gaze so at odds with his usual stiff, slightly formal and distant demeanor that Tess feels her thighs go loose and her belly go tight. 

“Sweetheart,” he says, his voice pitched low so no one hears them and so, she suspects, her nipples will peak just as they do for him, for the little growl beneath his crisp consonants and the way his fingertips dig into her lower back, her suspicion confirmed when he crowds her even further and she smells ale on his breath, the hint of hops and courage. Tess rises onto her tiptoes and nuzzles her mouth into the open collar of his shirt, long-sleeved even here on the beach where almost everyone else is wearing shorts or bikinis, and their groans mingle as she finds his skin and sinks her teeth into the meat of him. His breath blows hot in her ear and his voice is warning and invitation all at once: “Don’t keep running away.” 

In the story, she doesn’t. In reality, it as if Harvey’s wistful request has leant her wings, her mad dash back to the farm ending in a miserable evening alone and pacing, alone and crying, alone and cursing. 

Her hands are shaking because she’s terrified and angry because she’s terrified and Harvey is staring at her across the counter in his clinic the next day as afternoon and evening kiss hello, Maru long gone, his white coat half-hanging from one shoulder as she pushes her offerings aggressively across the counter, hyper-aware of her own harsh breathing as he turns and finishes taking off his coat to hang it up, his movements careful and somehow gentle as he smooths out the last of the wrinkles and the drabs of Tess’s patience. 

It makes her feel infinitely better when she sees his hands tremble as she says his name, “Harvey,” and then, again, no less demanding but softening, edged in hope and wishing as he turns his wide forest gaze on her, as he steps out from behind the counter and into her, their bodies as neatly ranged as they can be when he is half a foot taller than she. She curls into him, into this man who holds her as if she’s both fragile and precious, a gift and a promise, into this man who is older than she by a decade that she has led on a much more merry chase than she imagines he wanted. 

“You’re just in time,” Tess says, holding her hand out to Harvey as he steps across the shiny new wide plank pine floor to her side, as she lifts her face for the kiss he is obliging enough to give even as he blushes, his hand coming up to cup her face, his mustache tickling her nose. “Hi, handsome,” she breathes across his lips and dimly she hears Maru laugh, Abigail choke, Sam sigh, Emily cheer, and Sebastian groan as Harvey tucks her hair behind her ears. 

This isn’t a fairy story her wise, aged Grandfather is telling her. This is her life. This is her life as Harvey sinks down in the space her friends have made for him, his arm around her waist, her hand on his thigh, and her heart fluttering like a bird settling onto its perch for the night, fast and strong and steady. 


End file.
